Italo Calvino - [Our Ancestors 02]

by The Baron in the Trees (epub)

  There she was, waving one of her flags and looking through her telescope, when suddenly her face lit up and she laughed. We realized that Cosimo had answered. How I don't know, by a wave of the hat perhaps, or by a wave of the tip of a bough. Certainly from that moment our mother changed; she lost her apprehensions, and if her destiny as a mother was different from others, with a son so strange and lost to normal affections, she came to accept this strangeness of Cosimo's before any of the rest of us, as if placated by those greetings which from then onwards he would send her unexpectedly every now and again, by this silent exchange.

  The strange thing was that our mother never deluded herself that Cosimo, now he had sent her a greeting, was thinking of ending his escape and returning among us. Our father, on the other hand, lived perpetually in this hope and at the slightest news about Cosimo would repeat: "Ah yes? You've seen him? He's coming back?" But our mother, the most removed from Cosimo in a way, seemed the only one who managed to accept him as he was, perhaps because she did not try to give herself any explanation.

  But let us return to that day. Peeping from behind our mother's skirts now appeared Battista, who very rarely went outside; holding up a plate with some strange pap in it and raising a spoon she cooed: "Cosimo . . . D'you want any?" But she got a slap from our father and went back indoors. Who knows what monstrous mishmash she had prepared! Our brother had vanished.

  I yearned to follow him—above all, now that I knew he was taking part in the escapades of the band of little ruffians—and to me he seemed to have opened the doors of a new kingdom, one to be looked at no longer with alarm and mistrust but with shared enthusiasm. I was constantly running back and forth between the terrace and a high dormer window from which I could look over the treetops; and from there, more with the ear than the eye, I would follow the scamperings of the band through the orchards, watch the tops of the cherry trees quiver, and every now and again a hand appear plucking and picking, a tousled or hooded head, and among the voices hear Cosimo's and ask myself: "But how on earth did you get over there? You were in the park just a moment ago. Are you quicker than a squirrel?"

  They were on the red plum trees above the Upper Pool, I remember, when they heard the horn. I heard it too but took no notice, not knowing what it was. But they did! My brother told me that they stood rooted to the spot, and in their astonishment at hearing the horn again seemed to forget it was a signal of alarm: they just asked each other if they'd heard aright, if it was the Sinforosa again, riding around on her pony to warn them of danger. Suddenly they scattered from the orchard, not in a rush to escape, but to look for her and reach her.

  Only Cosimo remained, his face red as fire. But as soon as he saw the urchins running and realized they were running to her, he began to leap from branch to branch himself, risking his neck at every move.

  Viola was on a curving slope of the lane, sitting still, one hand with the reins on the pony's crupper, the other brandishing a riding crop. As she looked down on the little boys she brought the tip of the crop to her mouth and began chewing it. Her dress was blue, the horn gilt and hanging on her neck by a chain. The boys had all stopped together and were also chewing, at plums or fingers or scabs on their hands and arms, or comers of sacking. And slowly from their chewing mouths, as if overcoming some inner disquiet and not from any real feeling, almost as if wanting to be contradicted, they began to mouth phrases under their breath, in rhythm, like a song: "What have you . . . come to do . . . Sinforosa . . . back you go . . . now you are. . . our friend no more. . . ah, ah, ah . . . ah, betrayer."

  Above, the branches burst apart and there, in a high fig tree appeared the head of Cosimo, panting, surrounded by leaves. From down below, with that crop in her hand, she swept him and the others with the same look. Cosimo could not contain himself; still with his tongue out, he yelled: "D'you know I've never been down from the trees since then?"

  Undertakings such as these should be kept quiet and mysterious; once declared or boasted about they are apt to seem pointless and even petty. So my brother had scarcely pronounced those words when he wished he had not said them; it did not seem to matter any more, and he even found himself wanting to come down and have done with the whole business. All the more when Viola slowly took her crop out of her mouth and said, softly: "Haven't you now? You clever little thing!"

  From the flea-ridden urchins came rumbles of laughter, then their mouths opened and they broke into roars and screams till their bellies ached, and Cosimo went into such a paroxysm of rage on the fig tree that the brittle wood gave way, and a branch cracked under his feet. Cosimo fell like a stone.

  He fell with his arms outstretched, making no effort to stop himself. That was the only time, to tell the truth, during his whole life in the trees of this world, that he had neither will nor instinct to grip hold of something. But a comer of his coat caught and impaled him on a low branch; Cosimo found himself hanging in the air with his head down, a foot or so from the ground.

  The blood in his head came from the same force which was making him blush scarlet. And his first thought on looking up and seeing the screaming boys (upside down), who were now seized by a general frenzy of somersaulting in which one by one they appeared right side up as if gripping the ground above an abyss, and the little blond girl galloping up and down on her prancing pony—his one thought was that it was the first time he had ever actually spoken of being on the trees and that it would also be the last.

  With a jerk he drew himself back on to the branch and got astride it. Viola had now calmed down her pony and did not seem to have noticed what had been happening. Cosimo immediately forgot his confusion. The girl brought the horn to her lips and blew the deep call of alarm. At the sound, the urchins (who—as Cosimo commented later—seemed to be sent by Viola's presence into a wild state of agitation, like hares under a full moon) went rushing off in flight. They let themselves be drawn off like that, as if by instinct, though realizing she had done it as a joke, running down the slope imitating the call of the horn with her galloping in front on her short-legged pony.

  They were blundering along so blindly that every now and again they found her no longer ahead. Eventually she shook them off by galloping away from the path. Where was she going? She galloped along through the olive groves, down to the valley which sloped gradually. She looked for the tree on which Cosimo was perched at that moment, galloped right around it, and was off again. A moment later there she was at the foot of another olive, with my brother's head appearing above the leaves. And so, in lines as twisted as the branches of the olives themselves, down the valley they went together.

  When the little thieves noticed them, and saw how they both were linked from branch to saddle, they all began whistling together, a spiteful whistle of derision; and whistling louder and louder, went off toward Porta Capperi, one of the gates of the town.

  The girl and my brother remained alone, chasing each other among the olives, but Cosimo was disappointed to notice that when the rabble vanished Viola's enjoyment of the game seemed to fade and boredom to set in. The suspicion came to him that she was doing all this on purpose to anger the others, and at the same time the hope came that she would continue even if only to anger him; certainly she seemed to need the anger of others in order to make herself feel more precious. (All things scarcely more than sensed by the boy Cosimo then; in reality I imagine he was scrambling over the rough barks without any true understanding, like a fool.)

  Suddenly, round a bluff they were assailed by a sharp little hail of gravel. The girl put her head down behind the pony's neck for protection and made off; my brother, in full view, up on the turn of a branch, remained under fire. But the little stones reached him too glancingly up there to hurt much, except for one or two on the forehead and ears. The little ruffians whistled and laughed, shouting: "Sin-fo-ro-sa is a bitch," as they ran away.

  The fruit thieves reached Porta Capperi, with its green cascades of caper plants down the walls. From the hovels around came th
e shouts of mothers. But the mothers yelled at their children because they had come home to supper instead of scavenging for food somewhere else. Around Porta Capped, in huts and thatched houses, broken-down carts and tents, were huddled the poorest folk of Ombrosa, so poor that they were kept outside the town gates and away from the fields, people who had drifted there from distant places whence they had been thrust by the famine and poverty which were on the increase in every state. It was dusk, and disheveled women with babies at their breasts were fanning smoky stoves; beggars lying in the open were bandaging their sores, and others were playing at dice, shouting raucously. The gang of urchins now added to the uproar and greasy smoke their own rioting, got slapped by their mothers and had fist fights among themselves in the dust. And already their rags had taken on the color of all the other rags, and their birdlike gaiety was muted into that dense rubbish heap of humanity. So, at the appearance of the fair girl at a gallop and Cosimo on the trees nearby, they just raised intimidated eyes, then slunk off and tried to lose themselves amid the dust and fire smoke, as if a wall had suddenly sprung up between them.

  For the two of them, all this was just a moment, a glance. Then Viola left the smoke from the shacks mingling with the evening shadows and the cries of women and children behind her, to gallop among the pines on the beach.

  Beyond was the sea. A faint clatter of stones. It was dark. The clatter became a hammer: the pony raced along striking sparks against the pebbles. From the low twisted branches of a pine tree my brother looked at the clear-cut shadow of the fair girl cross the beach. From the black sea rose a wave with a faint crest—it curled higher, advanced all white, broke and grazed the shadow of the horse and girl racing at full speed; Cosimo on the pine tree found his face wet with salty spray.

  } 6 {

  THOSE first days of Cosimo's on the trees were without aim or purpose, and were dominated entirely by the desire to know and possess his new kingdom. He would have liked to explore it to its extreme limits, to study all the possibilities it offered him, to discover it plant by plant and branch by branch. I say he would have liked to, but in fact we found him continually reappearing above our heads, with the busy quick movements of a wild animal which always seems, even when squatting and still, to be on the point of jumping away.

  Why did he return to our park? Seeing him twisting about on a plane tree or an ilex within the range of our mother's telescope, one would have said that the impulse urging him, his dominating passion, was always to scare us off, make us worried or angry. (I say us, because I had not yet managed to understand how his mind was working; when he needed something, the alliance with me could never, it seemed, be put in doubt; at other times he went over my head as if he had not even seen me.)

  But really, he was only passing us by. It was the wall by the magnolia tree which attracted him. It was there that we saw him vanish again and again, even when the fair girl could not have been up or when that host of governesses and aunts had made her go to bed. In the Ondariva gardens the branches spread out like the tentacles of extraordinary animals, and the plants on the ground opened up stars of fretted leaves like the green skins of reptiles, and waved feathery yellow bamboos with a rustle like paper. From the highest tree Cosimo, in his yearning to enjoy to the utmost the unusual greens of this exotic flora and its different lights and different silence, would let his head drop upside down, so that the garden became a forest, a forest not of this earth but a new world in itself.

  Then Viola appeared. Cosimo would see her suddenly giving herself a push on the swing, or in the saddle of the pony, or hear from the end of the garden the deep note of the hunting horn.

  The Marchese and Marchesa of Ondariva had never really worried about their daughter's wanderings. When she was about on foot, she had all her aunts following behind; as soon as she mounted the pony she was free as air, for the aunts did not go out riding and could not see where she went. And her intimacy with those urchins was too inconceivable even to cross their minds. But they had immediately noticed the little Baron clambering about the branches and were on the lookout for him, though with a certain air of superior contempt.

  Our father, on the other hand, linked his bitterness at Cosimo's disobedience to his aversion for the Ondarivas, almost as if wanting to blame them, as if it were they who were attracting his son into their garden, entertaining him, and encouraging him in that rebellious game of his. Suddenly he decided to organize a roundup to capture Cosimo, not on our land, but while actually in the Ondariva gardens. Almost as if to underline his aggressive intentions toward our neighbors, he decided not to lead the roundup himself (this would have meant presenting himself personally to the Ondarivas and asking them to restore his son—which, however unjustified, would have been a dignified link between noblemen), but to send a squad of servants under the command of the Cavalier Enea Silvio Carrega.

  Armed with ladders and ropes they went to the gates of the Ondariva villa. The Cavalier fluttered about in robe and fez, excusing himself and asking if they could enter. At first the Ondariva servants thought that ours had come to cut some trailing branches which grew over into their garden; then, at the Cavalier's confused phrases—"We want to catch . . . to catch . . ." pacing to and fro and looking up among the branches—they asked, "But what have you lost, a parrot?"

  "The son, the eldest son, the heir," said the Cavalier hurriedly, putting a ladder against an Indian chestnut and beginning to climb up it himself. Among the branches was Cosimo, dangling his legs with a carefree air. Viola, just as carefree, was bowling a hoop along the paths. The servants offered the Cavalier ropes with which to capture my brother; how, none of them exactly knew. But Cosimo, before the Cavalier had got halfway up the ladder, was already on top of another tree. The Cavalier had the ladder moved, and the same thing happened four or five times, each time with the Cavalier trampling on a flower bed and Cosimo passing in a couple of jumps on to a nearby tree. Suddenly Viola was surrounded by aunts and governesses, then led into the house and shut in, so as not to see all the commotion. Cosimo broke off a branch, brandished it in both hands and swished it in the air.

  "But why can't you go into your own wide park to conduct this hunt, my dear sirs?" asked the Marchese of Ondariva, appearing solemnly on the flight of steps from the villa, in dressing gown and skullcap, which made him look strangely like the Cavalier. "I ask the whole family of Piovasco di Rondò!" And he made a wide circular gesture which embraced the young Baron on the tree, his illegitimate uncle, our servants, and everything of ours beyond the wall.

  At this point Enea Silvio Carrega changed his tune. He trotted up to the Marchese and, fluttering about as if nothing was happening, began to talk to him about the fountains in the basin nearby and how he had got the idea of a much higher and more effective jet which would also serve, by changing a rosette, to water the lawns. This was a new proof of our illegitimate uncle's unpredictable and deceptive nature; he had been sent there by the Baron with a definite mandate, and with orders to treat the neighbors firmly; why, then, start a friendly chat with the Marchese as if wanting to ingratiate himself? The Cavalier only seemed to have talent as a conversationalist when it happened to suit him, and just at the very moment people were counting on his unfriendly character. The extraordinary thing was that the Marchese listened to him, began asking him questions and eventually took him off to examine all the fountains and jets. Both of them were dressed the same, both in long robes, both so much the same height that they might have been mistaken for each other. Behind them walked all our servants and theirs, some carrying ladders, which they did not know what to do with now.

  Meanwhile Cosimo was climbing undisturbed on to the trees near the windows of the villa, trying to find beyond the curtains the room in which Viola had been shut. He discovered it, finally, and threw a berry against the pane.

  The window opened and the face of the little blond girl appeared.

  "It's all your fault I am locked in here," she said, and shut the window again, pul
ling the curtain.

  Suddenly Cosimo felt desperate.

  When my brother was taken by one of his wild moods, it really was something to worry about. We saw him running (if the word running makes any sense when referring not to the earth's surface but to a world of irregular supports at different heights, with empty air between) and any moment it seemed he might lose his footing and fall, which never happened. He jumped, moved into rapid little steps on a sloping branch, leaned over and suddenly swung on to a higher branch, and in four or five of these precarious zigzags vanished from sight.

  Where did he go? That time he ran and ran, from ilex to olive to beech, till he was in the wood. There he paused, panting. Under him spread a meadow. A slight breeze was moving in a wave over the thick tufts of grass, with subtle shades of green. Over it flew the fluffy little white tufts of dandelions which had gone to seed. In the middle stood an isolated pine tree, unreachable, with oblong cones. Tree creepers, swift little birds with stippled brown wings, were perching on the thick clusters of pine needles, askew on the ends, some with their tails up and their beaks down, pecking at worms and pine nuts.

  That wish to enter into an elusive element which had urged my brother into the trees, was still now working inside him unsatisfied, making him long for a more intimate link, a relationship which would bind him to each leaf and twig and feather and flutter. It was the love which the hunter has for living things, and which he can only express by aiming his gun at them; Cosimo could not yet recognize it and was trying to satisfy it by probing deeper.

  The wood was thick and impenetrable. Cosimo had to open his way through by hacking with his rapier, and gradually he forgot his fixation, all taken up as he was by the practical problems to be faced one by one, and by a fear (which he did not want to recognize though it was there) of drawing too far away from familiar places. So, clearing his way on through the thick greenery, he reached a point where he saw two yellow eyes fixed on him between the leaves right ahead. Cosimo brought up his rapier, moved a branch aside and let it fall slowly back into place. Then he heaved a sigh of relief, and laughed at the fear he had felt; he had seen who those yellow eyes belonged to, a cat.